This Minor League System Having Major Impact in U.S.

The water is deeper than it looks.

On the surface, soccer in the United States appears a shallow pond. Glimmering at the top are the U.S. national teams, with Coach Tony DiCicco’s Olympic gold medalist women’s team the brightest of them all.

Just beneath that comes Major League Soccer, soon to head into its fourth season but still working to establish a true identity.

Lower down are the recreational leagues, the college and high school teams, and far below them are the millions of youngsters who play for fun and nothing more.

Even casual observers of the game recognize those layers, even if the attention they pay is scant.

But there is more to soccer in the U.S. than those levels. In the last few years, another acronym has been swimming strongly through the alphabet soup that includes USSF, MLS, USYSA, AYSO and assorted others.

This one is called the USISL, a much easier way of referring to the United System of Independent Soccer Leagues.

Although it has been around for 12 years under the leadership of Francisco Marcos, its 52-year-old commissioner and president, it is only in the last two or three years that the USISL has started to have a real impact.

“I was watching the USA-Australia game the other day,” Marcos said, “and there were Chris Armas and Tony Sanneh and C.J. Brown and Richie Williams [playing for the American national team], and I dare say that those four players would be nowhere in sight were it not for the USISL.

“They are representative of the many guys who have fallen through the cracks over the last 15 post-North American Soccer League years.”

What Marcos has been slowly building with the USISL is a minor league system for soccer similar to baseball’s multitiered format.

The fact that such a system did not exist when Marcos worked in the NASL was one reason for that league’s demise.

So far, USISL progress has been remarkable.

Playing largely out of the public eye but with the vital sponsorship of Umbro, an England-based soccer goods manufacturer, and a loyal local following in each of its communities, the USISL by 1998 had mushroomed to 132 teams in four leagues.

At the top of the heap is the A-League. A 28-team circuit in 1998, it operates, in effect, as the country’s second division--assuming MLS to be the first division.

Overshadowed in California by the Galaxy and the San Jose Clash, the A-League has four teams playing in the state--the Orange County Zodiac, Sacramento Geckos, San Diego Flash and San Francisco Bay Seals.

The Seals in 1997 gave the A-League a hefty publicity boost by defeating two MLS clubs, the Kansas City Wizards and the Clash, in earlier rounds before falling to eventual MLS champion Washington D.C. United in the semifinals of the U.S. Open Cup.

On the strength of that run, one of the Seals, defender C.J. Brown of Hayward, Calif., made the leap from the A-League to MLS’s Chicago Fire. Two weeks ago, Brown made his U.S. national team debut against Australia. Dozens of others have successfully followed the USISL-to-MLS route.

It is fair to say that had the USISL not existed, it would have been far more difficult for MLS to have been launched in 1996.

Coaches, too, have taken the USISL-to-MLS path. Octavio Zambrano was an A-League coach before joining the Galaxy. Tim Hankinson coached in the A-League and now has charge of the Tampa Bay Mutiny.

Bob Gansler, the U.S. World Cup coach in 1990, coaches the A-League’s Milwaukee Rampage but is being seriously talked about as the next D.C. United coach, replacing Bruce Arena.

Although MLS shuns the idea of relegation and promotion, there is a way for A-League teams to make the jump.

The Rochester (N.Y.) Raging Rhinos, for example, frequently attract sellout crowds of 13,000-plus to cozy Frontier Field, and, if the city goes ahead with plans to build a soccer-only stadium alongside Frontier Field, the Rhinos will probably be elevated to MLS.

“If they build the market and the stadium and the quality of the organization on and off the field, MLS will come and get them,” Marcos said. “And we will use Rochester as an example that it can happen, that promotion is going to be possible.

“Rochester is what I call the Green Bay of soccer. They [MLS leaders] will have to find half a dozen Green Bays over the next 10 years to give MLS what Green Bay gives the NFL: The small town that cares enough and makes a team its own.

“I have no doubt at all that Rochester will be in MLS by 2000, and we can’t wait for it to happen.”

Another A-League team is the U.S. Pro-40 Select, a developmental team of young MLS players under Coach Lothar Osiander, formerly of the Galaxy. The players are under contract to MLS but are gaining playing experience in the A-League and on foreign trips. Osiander takes the team on a five-game tour of England this week.

In addition to the A-League, the USISL in 1998 included the 39-team U.S. D3 Pro League (third division), the W-League, a 31-team women’s circuit, and the 34-team U.S. Premier League (developmental). A local team, the San Gabriel Valley Highlanders, won the Premier League title this year.

In the embryonic stage are the I-League (indoor) and the Y-League (under-15 youth).

Marcos said the USISL, attempting to build the pyramid beneath the MLS pinnacle, is generally receiving cooperation from U.S. Soccer, the sport’s governing body in this country, although there have been a few minor squabbles.

The USISL finds itself in conflict with the U.S. Amateur Soccer Assn., for example.

“They need to find a new focus,” Marcos said. “They need to think about soccer as a sport for life as the main activity that the amateur division should focus on, as opposed to pretending that they’re developing players.

“They should be developing beer guzzlers similar to softball players. People who keep on playing soccer after college. They should keep on playing soccer so that in the process they remain or become fans as opposed to ending their college careers and then becoming NFL armchair quarterbacks because the connection [with soccer] is lost.”

In other words, let USISL develop the future professional players and let the USASA concentrate on the recreational players.

“The same is true with the youth,” Marcos said. “We’re working now with the USYSA to start our own youth league this coming summer. Let us worry about the 5,000 or so kids who will play in competitive, dog-eat-dog league competition.

“Let USYSA worry about the kids who are going to just play soccer on Saturday mornings, who couldn’t care less about the national team, who don’t know anything about it, other than the fact that if they keep playing, they will eventually get to know all about it--as fans.”

At the moment, the pyramid is not quite in balance. As the Seals showed, the better A-League teams can compete with the MLS clubs.

“Take away the three stars, foreigners or national teams stars [on MLS clubs], and on any given day, it’s a game,” Marcos said.

“But the longer it goes on, the bigger the gap had better get, otherwise, there’s something wrong.”

The MLS and USISL are expected to reach agreement on a long-term relationship within the next week or two.

Meanwhile, four new A-League teams will start play next spring when the league season opens on the third weekend in April--the Indiana Blast, Lehigh Valley Steam, Maryland Mania and the Pittsburgh Riverdogs.

The regular season ends on Labor Day weekend, with playoffs beginning the next week. The championship game will be played Oct. 16 at the home stadium of one of the participating teams.

“The USISL is full of people who are bold enough to reach into their pocketbooks and follow their dreams” Hank Steinbrecher, U.S. Soccer’s secretary general, said at the USISL annual general meeting in Clearwater, Fla. “This is an important group of people who make soccer in this country click.

“As a result, the future is brighter than the past.”

For that, Marcos has to be thanked.

Instead of wandering off into other areas, he has been involved in the game for more than 30 years, ever since his days at Hartwick College.

“I guess you would say I had to make a decision--get a real job or find a way to make a living in the sport that I loved most,” he is quoted as saying in the USISL media guide.

“I just stayed with it, and through the years I found that if you take care of the game, it will take care of you.”